


32°F

by mintboy (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Humanstuck, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Meet-Ugly, One Shot, POV First Person, Romance, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 06:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16424060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/mintboy
Summary: Dave heads to the bus-stop in the snow, clad in not-so-cold-friendly gear, and accidentally wipes out into a huge puddle. Luckily for him, though, a kind stranger at the bus-stop steps in to help before he turns into an icicle.





	32°F

In the snow, it feels like the five-minute walk from my apartment building to the nearest bus stop is a mile away. Hailing from Houston, Texas, I’m not really used to the New-York-City-snow, and I’m absolutely freezing. I had forgotten to check the weather before leaving for the day; something which is somewhat excusable, considering I’m used to the weather being somewhere around ninety to a hundred degrees every day. In the winter it gets cooler, yeah, but never drops below a solid seventy.

It’s around thirty degrees right now, and I elected to wear a thin hoodie, skinny jeans, and converse – hence the fact that I didn’t check the weather. My fingers, which I have curled against the inside of the pockets in my hoodie, feel practically numb, and my toes aren’t faring any better; I can feel them touching the tips of my shoes, and with each step I just feel an empty kind of pain shooting through my feet.

I reach up, wiping my nose, which is running like crazy. It’s a good thing the grocery store is just a couple steps away from the bus-stop on the other end; this will be the longest part of my trip. If the walk to the store was any longer, I probably would’ve turned back, choosing to just not have dinner tonight. I run my wet sleeve across my shades, which are collecting snow. I can see the bus stop, now – I won’t have to walk much longer, luckily.

Speaking of luck, as my eyes catch the bus stop, I lose my footing on a small stretch of ice on the sidewalk. By the time I realize I’m falling, I’m already halfway down, and I brace myself as I tumble into a deep puddle that collected inside a dip in the pavement. The icy temperature of the water forces me up in seconds as I stumble out of the puddle and into someone. I can’t even get out an apology as she continues walking, presumably wearing headphones. I shake my wet hair for a second, collecting myself and slowing down my breathing. Luckily, I didn’t hit my head, though I can feel that I scraped my hands catching myself. My body aches; the deep, resounding ache that only comes with the cold.

It hits me how soaked I am as I feel myself shivering. It’s not a little chill, but a deep tremble that makes my teeth chatter. I look down at myself, and sure enough, everything I’m wearing is soaking wet.

“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, rubbing my eyes under my shades. I look up at the bus stop, which is probably under fifty feet away, now. I decide not to turn back. It’s a short trip, anyway. Rubbing my hands together – which are a little bloodied from the scrapes, and sting in the cold air – I step under the bus stop awning.

There’s someone standing there, already. He’s in a thick grey coat, scarf, and hat. I glance over at his hands, which are covered by leather gloves. He looks warm, and I feel a tinge of jealousy as the freezing wind rakes its claws through my wet skin.

“Jesus Christ, what happened to you?” says a voice, and I realize the man beside me had finally noticed me standing there.

“Decided to take a little dive into a street puddle, my guy,” I answer, my voice embarrassingly shaky as I try to speak through my chattering teeth, “you don’t like a little swim every once in a while?”

He looks at me incredulously, his brow furrowed. His eyes are a pleasant color, a warm brown, like there’s a fire dancing behind them. 

“You’re going to fucking freeze to death,” he comments, and I can hear a sliver of concern shine through the non-verbal proclamation of my utter idiocy. He stops, for a second, as if to leave the conversation there; after all, we don’t know each other.

I take a second to force my breathing to slow. I suddenly feel as if I’ve run a marathon – my heart is racing, and a sudden fatigue falls over me. I rub my hands together again, but the movement is kind of clumsy, like my hands are miles away, marionetted vaguely by my frozen wrists.

“You should go back to where you walked from,” the man speaks again, suddenly, looking over at me, “I don’t know how long you walked, but you shouldn’t be standing out here, that’s just fucking stupid, you – ”

He’s saying something about how I need a change of clothes, but his voice has melted into a sort of river of unintelligible sounds. It’s nice; like a melody. He goes on for a bit, presumably ranting, but for some reason what he’s saying doesn’t matter to me. He’s rather attractive, actually.

“Are you even listening to me?” he says, after a minute.

“Mm,” I reply. I feel nice, all of a sudden. Warm, like the cold just melted off of my body.

“Woah, what the _fuck_!” he exclaims, and I didn’t realize I was so close to the ground until it was right beside me, the stranger’s arms holding me up. With his free hand, he pulls off my shades, and I intend to stop him, but I can’t really feel my hands. I plant them firmly on the ground, weakly holding myself up. He pulls off his coat, wrapping it around my shoulders.

“We’re going inside. You’re gonna fucking die out here, holy fuck,” the man mutters under his breath.

He pulls me up, and my shaky legs feel like weak, splintering stilts. His arm firmly snakes around my shoulders – I want to tell him I’m not going to fall again, but nothing comes out of my mouth. It takes us a couple of minutes to make the short walk into the set of apartments behind the bus-stop. The warmth of the building feels like an immense wave crashing over me. He takes me up in the elevator, his nervous eyes continuously flicking to meet my somewhat-unfocused gaze.

He fumbles with the door to his apartment for a moment, before pulling me inside.

“You’re fucking lucky I lived so close to that bus stop, you idiotic shit-stain,” he grumbles as he pulls the coat off of me. He moves into the next room over, disappearing behind a doorframe covered in chipping white paint.

The apartment is small, but well kept – with the exception of some minor chipping in the paint and rips in the wallpaper. It’s incredibly clean, but still feels like a home. It’s a stark contrast to my barely-livable mess of a space.

“Nice place,” I comment loudly, finally finding my voice. It’s a little cracked, splintered from the sand that feels like it’s coating the inside of my freezing lips.

The man appears again, rolling his eyes.

“Shut the fuck up and strip,” he orders, throwing a crumpled ball of clothes at me, “I don’t have anything bigger than these, so let’s hope they fit your lanky ass.”

“Woah, moving fast, aren’t we,” every word feels like running a mile, and even my smirk feels forced and weak. He ignores my comment, turning and walking past his island and into his kitchen.

“I’m going to make you some soup,” he says.

With his back to me, I shuck off my wet clothes, relieved at the way the warmth of the room finally seems to seep into my skin. The clothes he found are a little tight, but they do fit. It’s just a t-shirt and sweatpants, but god it’s comfortable in comparison to my soaked shirt and skinny jeans. The shirt is faded; it’s merchandise from some kind of concert, but I don’t recognize the group on it.

He wanders back in with a bowl of soup and a spoon, inviting me to sit down. He hands it to me, sitting beside me on his small, leather couch.

I swallow a spoonful of soup, which invades my mouth with its pleasant heat. I sigh with relief.

“I thought you were going to just drop dead out there,” he guy says, breaking the somewhat uncomfortable silence, which I had occupied by tapping my foot on his hardwood floor, “have you never been, like, _outside_ before? What the fuck made you think it was okay to wear that?”

“’M from Houston,” I answer between spoonfuls of soup.

“Oh,” is his reply. I look over at him, finally getting a good look at him. His hair is a messy mop on his head, presumably mussed from his hat. He’s handsome, though I’d realized that before. He’s wearing a black turtleneck that hugs him well, and as he looks back at me, he fiddles with the little silver crab hanging from a chain around his neck.

“I’m Dave, by the way,” I say with a little laugh, “forgot to mention that. Guess I was a little occupied.”

He rolls his eyes.

“I’m Karkat,” he responds.

_Karkat_. That’s nice.

“Thanks for all this,” I reach up instinctively to push up my shades, but realize they aren’t there. I mutter a little ‘fuck’ under my breath, glancing over at my heap of wet clothes. Where did they go?

“Oh, your glasses, right?” Karkat stands up, moving back into the kitchen for a moment. He returns with my shades in hand, sitting back down beside me, “why the fuck do you wear these in weather like this, anyway?”

“I always wear them,” I answer automatically, reaching out for them. He hesitates, pulling his hand back slightly.

“… Could you keep them off?” he asks.

“What?” I meet his eyes. There’s a sort of odd sincerity in them.

“Your eyes are pretty,” he answers, rubbing the back of his neck.

I can’t think of a reply to that. I’ve always thought my eyes were hideous. I nod, though, and he sets down my shades on his coffee table. There’s a moment of silence, again – my worst enemy. It’s uncomfortable and picks at my chest. I tap a beat on my leg with my fingers, which are stained with the remnants of nail-polish I had removed the night before.

“… So, is this a first date, Kit-Kat?” I joke, sending hairlines through the quiet. He lets out a sort of awkward laugh, his eyes flitting quickly between my face and the ground.

“Fuck off,” is his only response.

The silence returns, and I gulp down the remainder of the soup, which has cooled down considerably. I set down the bowl on the table. I know I should probably go, but my mind keeps circling around Karkat’s pleasant gaze; it’s like I don’t want to let go of that kind stare. Seeing the concern, the sincerity, the warmth.

It feels like I’ve stumbled across something amazing, and by stepping back out of Karkat’s life, I’m letting it slip away.

“Hey,” I say, suddenly. Karkat looks back at me, searching my face.

“What?” he snaps. His voice is fiery, but the warm in his eyes is still a soft kind of warmth, like a crackling fire; comfortable and welcoming.

“I don’t wanna intrude or anything, so I can go, but,” I rub my knuckles, “I don’t know. This was just really kind of you, and, like, I’d like to take you out for coffee, or something, if you’d like that.”

A blink is Karkat’s first reply – the sort of blink that is like staring at a progress-bar or loading screen.

“… I would,” he replies, a smile sneaking across his face. It’s radiant. It makes something in my heart sing a little. He pulls out his phone and opens the new-contact page, handing it to me.

“Cool,” I say, hastily typing in my number and handing it back to him.

“Just don’t fucking freeze to death next time, okay?” he jokes.

“Will do,” I promise, with a laugh.

He’s smiling even wider, now. Seeing his smile is like the first time I saw an open, untainted sky of stars after living in Houston for eighteen years. It’s beautiful, breathtaking. In that moment, I realize I’d do just about anything to make him smile again.

And I do – in a week, and then a week after that, and then two days after that, and three after that, and, well –

The rest is history.


End file.
